:08:00
four days before
Franco took Barcelona,
:08:03
Machado and his family set out
for the French border in a convoy.
:08:07
Five days later,
:08:08
under pouring rain,
they crossed
:08:11
the border and left Spain
:08:13
forever.
:08:16
A month later,
Machado died in Collioure.
:08:18
His mother
:08:19
outlived him by 3 days.
In Antonio's
:08:21
pocket, his brother José
found some notes
:08:24
with lines from what was
:08:26
possibly the first verse
of his last poem,
:08:29
'These azure days
and this childhood sun.'
:08:34
His brother the poet Manuel learned
of his death from the foreign press.
:08:38
The two were more than brothers.
:08:40
They were close friends.
:08:42
The 18th July uprising surprised
Manuel in Burgos. He stayed there,
:08:46
a sympathizer of Franco.
:08:50
As soon as he heard of Antonio's
death, he obtained a safe-conduct
:08:54
and crossing a war-torn Spain,
:08:56
went to Collioure.
:08:58
There he was told that his mother
had also died. At the cemetery
:09:02
he visited his mother's
and Antonio's graves
:09:05
and probably met up with José.
:09:08
They talked.
:09:10
Two days later
he returned to Burgos.
:09:14
At the same time, in the Collell
church, in northern Catalonia,
:09:17
another poet, Rafael Sánchez Matas,
faced a firing squad.
:09:22
A close friend ofJosé Antonio, and
founder of the fascist Falange party.
:09:27
Mazas'fortunes in the war
are shrouded in mystery.130
:09:30
He was arrested
in Barcelona early in 1938,
:09:33
but when Franco arrived there
he was moved to the Collell,
:09:37
near the French border.
:09:39
There he faced a firing squad
:09:41
in what was a mass
and probably chaotic execution.
:09:44
The war was near its end and the
Republicans fled to the Pyrenees,
:09:48
so they may not
have known he was
:09:50
one of the Falange's founders
:09:53
and a friend of
José Antonio Primo de Rivera.
:09:56
In the confusion
Sánchez Mazas ran off,
:09:59
and managed to hide
in a hollow in the forest.